One rule for one, one rule for another

Except for the Guardian, the remarkable under-reporting of the phone hacking scandal at Mirror Group Newspapers is really striking - especially in comparison to the massive coverage of the News of the World scandal. 

And it's not just the media. Even Roy Greenslade at the Guardian seems taken aback at the Labour Party's behaviour:

The current Labour leadership, and all those Labour MPs who kicked up about the News of the World’s misbehaviour, should have issued statements and spoken out loudly in public about similar activities having occurred at the Daily and Sunday Mirror and Sunday People.

I’ve searched the Twitter file of Tom Watson, for example, and can’t find any condemnation from him following the statement at the high court about hacking being “rife” at Mirror group.

I did the same search for comments about the Mirror by another Labour MP who used to speak so often about the disgrace of the News of the World hackers, Chris Bryant. Silence, a deafening silence, on the subject once again.

By ignoring the Mirror’s hacking Labour is tending to indicate that it was, after all, playing politics when it was so critical of David Cameron in 2011.

Why should the party let Trinity Mirror off the hook? Because its papers support Labour and there’s an election coming up? Because its papers aren’t owned by Murdoch? Because the Mirror’s hackers didn’t intercept the voicemails of John Prescott (a Sunday Mirror columnist)? Because hacking is yesterday’s news? 

None of these excuses stands up. Labour should show some principle by treating the Mirror the way it did Murdoch.

As should the BBC. There's more to the story than just Alan Yentob.

Of Hacking, Hypocrisy and Weasels

The BBC (and the Guardian) pursued the Murdoch empire relentlessly over phone hacking. 

You'll doubtless recall the countless lead stories on the website, the innumerable 'Newsnight' reports, the endless updates on 'PM', all those Robert Peston blogposts, etc, etc, etc. Pretty much every twist and turn in the story received massive attention from the BBC. 

Murdoch's Sky is, of course, the BBC's major rival, so they were never going to be a disinterested party. The outrageous thing was how little effort they made to hide the fact. 

Of course I could be wrong, and if the BBC reports the growing Mirror Group hacking scandal with the same obsessive focus as it reporting the 'News of  the World' scandal then I'll have to eat my words, won't I? The BBC will have proved itself to be disinterested as the Mirror Group isn't a major rival of the BBC in the way that News Corp is. We will have to see.

At the high court today the Mirror Group stands accused of phone hacking "on an industrial scale" - a scale dwarfing that at the Murdoch newspapers. 

According to the FT,

David Sherborne, barrister for the victims, told the High Court that the trial would look at the “size and scale of unlawful activity” at Mirror Group Newspapers (MGN), where he claimed phone hacking was carried out by “scores of journalists”.

He told the High Court that the “vast” amount of phone hacking carried out throughout the three national newspapers “makes News of the World look like a cottage industry and a small one at that”.

How is the BBC reporting this astonishing claim? Well, it is reporting it. It's seventh in its running order on the news website. And the BBC News at Six on BBC One reported it as its next-to-last story, 24 minutes in, just before the 'weasel riding on the flying woodpecker' story - and after two 'Jihadi Mohammed' stories, including more propaganda from CAGE. 

Hmm. Yes it's been a day full of of big, harrowing domestic stories - the report into "industrial scale" abuse by grooming gangs in Oxford, the report into the maternity unit scandal at Furness Hospital - but had this been a damaging Murdoch empire story then I suspect it would have featured a good deal more prominently, and not been merely the warm-up-story to the weasel riding on the woodpecker's back. 

Plus, David Sillitoe's report for BBC One didn't even mention David Sherborne's most striking claim: that phone hacking at Mirror Group Newspapers made 'News of the World' "look like a cottage industry and a small one at that". 

The same cannot be said for the Guardian, which makes that very point its main angle and features thestory far more prominently than the BBC. The Mirror Group is much more of a rival for the Guardian than it is for the BBC, of course.

Everyone seems to be behaving according to their own interests here, don't they? 

Incidentally, another of the Guardian and the BBC's go-to-men during the whole course of the 'NOTW' scandal, Labour MP and prolific tweeter Tom Watson, is unusually quiet on Twitter today. He's tweeted nothing about hacking at Mirror Group. [And neither for that matter has Robert Peston]. It's most unlike him not to tweet about hacking. What's gotten into him? Just what is it about the Labour-supporting Mirror Group that isn't exciting his righteous anger as much? 

Is the smell of hypocrisy hanging heavy in the air today?

Hacked...Off the Agenda

The Daily Mail, of course, has its own agenda over the growing hacking scandal surrounding law firms, blue-chip companies and celebrities over their alleged use of private detectives to hack, blag and steal private information. The Mail is clearly using the story to undermine Leveson. Moreover, the Mail is also taking the opportunity to bash its enemies at the BBC and the Guardian. 

Still, none of that means that the Mail doesn't have a point when it writes:

Hacking: Why the silence of the Left?

After almost six weeks of deafening silence, the Guardian and the BBC finally make passing references to the revelations that law firms, blue-chip companies and others routinely hired private investigators guilty of hacking, blagging and stealing private information. 

What a contrast to the hullabaloo they raised two years ago, when they devoted oceans of ink and hours of airtime to the narrower scandal of voicemail hacking by rogue elements of the red-top Press.

To borrow a phrase from a Guardian headline, attacking other newspapers for failing to clear their front pages for the NoW story: 'Why the silence?' 

Isn't it hard to avoid the conclusion that the Left-wing media's crusade for Press curbs was driven less by horror of hacking than hatred of viable papers that express popular opinions contrary to theirs?

Is that fair? As the story has gathered pace in recent months, have the BBC and the Guardian really been downplaying it? Using only the search techniques provided by 'Google', is it possible to either back up or refute the Mail's charges?

It's interesting that the Mail doesn't include the Independent in its criticism. The Independent most certainly has been covering the story. Back on 22 June, its article The other hacking scandal: Suppressed report reveals that law firms, telecoms giants and insurance companies routinely hire criminals to steal rivals' information laid out the allegations of criminal activity on the part of companies and of the failure of Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) to take action. A suppressed official report had been leaked to the Independent. Two days after that article its editorial thundered, "Other hackers need scrutiny too: As this newspaper has revealed, Leveson ignored evidence that most theft of private information was carried out on behalf of law firms and large corporations." The paper has since pursued the story tenaciously. Here are just a few examples (with links): 27 June, 1 July, 7 July, 19 July, 20 July, 23 July, 25 July, etc, etc; indeed, I count 27 important articles on the story in the last couple of months - many of them major 'exclusives' by the paper. 

The Daily Mail itself has covered the story extensively too. It immediately reported the Independent's scoop on 22 June: 80% of hacking was by lawyers and major firms... and the Leveson inquiry knew all about it. Its editorial the following day, Lawyers, hacking and a conspiracy of silence, marked the start of its own tenacious coverage of every twist and turn in the scandal. I count some 25 major articles on the subject over the last couple of months, spaced (like the Independent) at regular intervals. 

What of the Guardian? Is the Mail's charge against them true? Well, 'yes' is the short answer to that - except that the Guardian did publish one article on the story back on 22 June, when the Independent first broke the story: Soca alleged to have suppressed report of hacking by companies and law firms. Illegal activity by private investigators appears not to have been published to home affairs select committee. Thereafter, there was indeed - as the Mail put it - "almost six weeks of deafening silence" from the Guardian until 31 July the the first of 4 major articles appeared. So that's just 5 such articles in total from the Guardian. 

What of the BBC News website? Are they 'guilty as charged', like the Guardian? Well, almost. The BBC didn't report the Independent's story on 22 June. They waited until three days later: MPs consider hacking claims against other industries (25 June) - the latest of all the media outlets reviewed. [As I was monitoring Radio 4's PM throughout the latter half of June and the start of July I know that they didn't cover the story at all]. The BBC News website did, however, report the story again twice during those "almost six weeks of deafening silence", both times on 2 July: Soca defends response on lawbreaking private eyes and a piece by Tom Symonds (BBC Home Affairs correspondent) called Rogue private eyes: The next hacking scandal? Thereafter there were 27 days of silence until 29 July, when the coverage began again with 6 further articles - making a total of 9 in all. During those 27 days of silence though there were 5 more major articles on hacking within the Murdoch empire. Given the way most twists and turns in the News of the World story got top billing on BBC One's News at Six, it was revealing that this story only managed 8th place on the 31 July bulletin, just prior to a Rihanna story. 

So there's certainly plenty of evidence to back up the Daily Mail's charge that the BBC and the Guardian, who pursued the Murdoch empire so relentlessly over the hacking allegations against them, have been seriously downplaying this latest (non-Murdoch-related) hacking scandal. 

The Mail has a stab at explaining why: The BBC and the Guardian aren't interested in the story because...well...because they have no interest or 'interests' in it. Is that really why they've both been playing it down? If it is then that's surely something of a scandal in itself, isn't it? [The Guardian, of course, is a private company and can report what it wants to report. The BBC isn't. It's a publicly-funded corporation with editorial guidelines].